By Sarita Chemburkar Agriculture is the main source of livelihoods for around 6 out of 10 people in India, and groundwater has played a key role in providing water for agriculture, especially post the Green Revolution in the 1970s. At a global level, India is today the world’s largest groundwater user, consuming an approximately 260 […]

By Geetanjali Prasad Sanitary napkins are a boon for millions of women in today’s world, but they can also be a nightmare for the environment if not disposed in an eco-friendly way. Since most women do not know how to dispose them in this way, the used sanitary napkins invariably get thrown out with the […]

By Vikas Prakash Joshi On the occasion of World Honeybee Day, celebrated every year on the third Saturday of August, it is significant to note that India is today the world’s sixth largest producer of honey. (1) Over 2.5 lakh farmers in India are involved in beekeeping or ‘apiculture’ as a business, as per the […]

By Vikas Prakash Joshi Organic agriculture is generally considered a more sustainable and eco- friendly approach to agriculture than conventional chemical-based farming practices. Organic practices generally do not rely on chemical fertilizers and pesticides which leach the soil of nutrients, and are less expensive. At the national and state level, there have been a number […]

With the aim of “co-production of knowledge and learning to stimulate behavioral and institutional change, towards the management of water at village level” workshops were conducted in each GP and their hamlets.he key objectives of the workshop were to understand the following points: a) What is a Water Budget and how a village water budget is calculated?
(b) How to arrive at values for “Water Deficit” and “Water Surplus” at village level?
(c) The need for planning crop production around the water availability and
(d) To understand water wastage due to mismanagement and / or lack of knowledge.

There’s a resilience in the farming community that often gets overlooked – a community that has, over generations, developed its own methods and practices of dealing with the unhindered forces of nature. These practices are, unfortunately, being put to test owing to the changing climatic conditions all over the earth. As unpredictable weather patterns keep baffling the farmers, the need for an intervention is apparent to level the playing field. In this regard, we shift the focus on WOTR’s weather advisory initiative which is a real-time, localized, early-warning system which disseminates information directly to the farmers via SMS services. Looking at the effectiveness of the intervention from the vantage point of the farmers brings out the socio-economic complexities which are rarely apparent on the surface.

a story of an innovation champion Shri Ganesh Goud, who has adopted a new approach called the Group Micro Irrigation (GMI) approach and is a change maker at the community level. WOTR has been promoting this approach since 2014, and 11 groups are covering 149 farmers. The experiences of convincing farmers the advantages this approach has been a challenging task – as sharing water resources particularly in a drought-prone area where it is becoming scare every year is a contentious issue! However, like every cloud has a silver lining, the story of Ganesh Goud and his group from Badnapur village is one to share

-Saumyadeb Dasgupta “I wish they’d had electric guitars in cotton fields back in the good old days. A whole lot of things would’ve been straightened out.” -Jimi Hendrix, 1970 YES, if the ‘whole lot of things’ were farmers wanting to form a band but a NO if it were racial conflicts and oppression faced by […]

The initial few days at any organisation are all about getting to know it better. One tends to read about the organisation’s journey, its work, achievements and failures. While we were busy doing the same at WOTR, there was something atypical everyone kept talking about “the field”. Some said, “At WOTR, you will get a lot of field exposure”, or “Ah! Field is always good!” It almost seemed like there was dichotomy in the world here- the desk in the predominantly cream coloured office and the Field.